Balder the Beautiful, Volume I. eBook

Sec. 8. The Need-fire, pp. 269-300.—­Need-fire
kindled not at fixed periods but on occasions of distress
and calamity, 269; the need-fire in the Middle Ages
and down to the end of the sixteenth century, 270 sq.;
mode of kindling the need-fire by the friction of wood,
271 sq.; the need-fire in Central Germany,
particularly about Hildesheim, 272 sq.; the
need-fire in the Mark, 273; in Mecklenburg, 274 sq.;
in Hanover, 275 sq.; in the Harz Mountains,
276 sq.; in Brunswick, 277 sq.; in Silesia
and Bohemia, 278 sq.; in Switzerland, 279 sq.;
in Sweden and Norway, 280; among the Slavonic peoples,
281-286; in Russia and Poland, 281 sq.; in
Slavonia, 282; in Servia, 282-284; in Bulgaria, 284-286;
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 286; in England, 286-289;
in Yorkshire, 286-288; in Northumberland, 288 sq.;
in Scotland, 289-297; Martin’s account of it
in the Highlands, 289; the need-fire in Mull, 289 sq.;
in Caithness, 290-292; W. Grant Stewart’s account
of the need-fire, 292 sq.; Alexander Carmichael’s
account, 293-295; the need-fire in Aberdeenshire,
296; in Perthshire, 296 sq.; in Ireland, 297;
the use of need-fire a relic of the time when all
fires were similarly kindled by the friction of wood,
297 sq.; the belief that need-fire cannot kindle
if any other fire remains alight in the neighbourhood,
298 sq.; the need-fire among the Iroquois of
North America, 299 sq.

Sec. 9. The Sacrifice of an Animal to stay a Cattle-plague,
pp. 300-327.—­The burnt sacrifice of a calf
in England and Wales, 300 sq.; burnt sacrifices
of animals in Scotland, 301 sq.; calf burnt
in order to break a spell which has been cast on the
herd, 302 sq.; mode in which the burning of
a bewitched animal is supposed to break the spell,
303-305; in burning the bewitched animal you burn the
witch herself, 305; practice of burning cattle and
sheep as sacrifices in the Isle of Man, 305-307; by
burning a bewitched animal you compel the witch to
appear, 307; magic sympathy between the witch and the
bewitched animal, 308; similar sympathy between a
were-wolf and his or her human shape, wounds inflicted
on the animal are felt by the man or woman, 308; were-wolves
in Europe, 308-310; in China, 310 sq.; among
the Toradjas of Central Celebes, 311-313 sq.;
in the Egyptian Sudan, 313 sq.; the were-wolf
story in Petronius, 313 sq.; witches like were-wolves
can temporarily transform themselves into animals,
and wounds inflicted on the transformed animals appear
on the persons of the witches, 315 sq.; instances
of such transformations and wounds in Scotland, England,
Ireland, France, and Germany, 316-321; hence the reason
for burning bewitched animals is either to burn the
witch herself or at all events to compel her to appear,
321 sq.; the like reason for burning bewitched
things, 322 sq.; similarly by burning alive
a person whose likeness a witch has assumed you compel
the witch to disclose herself, 323; woman burnt alive
as a witch in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth
century, 323 sq.; bewitched animals sometimes
buried alive instead of being burned, 324-326; calves
killed and buried to save the rest of the herd, 326
sq.